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Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that was propelled by a project at the research labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced this week plans to develop what it calls “the world’s first scaled fusion power plant “. The plant, which is expected to come online in the early 2030s, according to the companywill be built in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
The plan is certainly ambitious, starting with how the energy will be generated. Nuclear fusion is a notoriously difficult process that involves the fusion of two light atomic nuclei into a single heavier one, resulting in the release of a massive amount of energy – it is estimated to produce four times more energy such as nuclear fission reactions. The reaction that generates nuclear fusion is the same type of reaction that powers the sun.
It is not difficult to imagine why one would want to be able to exploit the energy of the sun. It’s hard to actually do it, you know, though. To date, nuclear fusion has proven elusive, at least in a way that produces usable energy. In 2022, scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reached nuclear fusion “ignition” for the first time, meaning that they have successfully produced an excess of energy from the reactions. Before that discovery, which has it has since been replicatedit took more energy to produce the reaction than the energy coming from it.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems has not yet achieved the feat of producing excess energy, for futurism. In fact, the company has not yet completed the construction of its smaller reactor which was designed to serve as a proof of concept for a larger future plant. That project continues, but it seems that the startup has decided to start working forward under the assumption that everything works rather than checking the boxes first.
The company is promising that once this larger reactor goes online in Virginia, it will produce 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 150,000 homes. That would be great! It also seems a bit ambitious based on the 0 megawatts currently generated by the process.
There is a reason nuclear fusion has proven so elusive so far, but maybe now that the seal has been broken on the ignition, the developments in the space come in fast and stable. With $2 billion in funding already behind it, Commonwealth Fusion Systems has as good a chance as anyone to figure it out. And if he can’t, maybe he can figure out a way to harness the energy to burn through all that money.
